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Smartphones Work Round The Clock, Tablets Come Out At Night

November 1, 2012 - by MarketingCharts staff

Consumers use smartphones fairly steadily throughout the day, while tablet use rises sharply at night, finds the latest Jumptap MobileSTAT report. Measuring iPad and iPhone use by time of day, the study finds that both devices have below-hourly-average use from 8 AM to noon, although iPhone use during those hours is much closer to the average. Later, between 8PM and midnight, iPhone use is 52% above average and iPad use up a whopping 87%. In general, iPhone use hews closer to the average throughout the day than iPad use, which skews heavily towards the evening hours.

Flurry in October observed much the same phenomenon. Using smartphone and tablet application usage as a measure, the study found smartphone app usage to be fairly steady between 8AM and 7PM, used by between 4% and 6.5% of the smartphone user base. Tablet use is pretty flat, between 4% and 5% until 4pm, when it begins to rise sharply, peaking at about 8.25% in the 9PM hour (and in TV primetime). Smartphone usage peaks at the same time, but at under 7%.

Tablets are more distinctly a leisure-time platform than are smartphones, based on the apps that consumers use. Tablet users spend more time using media and entertainment apps, including games (67% of time spent), entertainment (9%) and news (2%) categories, comprising almost four-fifths of consumption. Smartphones have a higher claim to communication and task-oriented app usage, including social networking (24%), utilities (17%), health & fitness (3%) and lifestyle (3%), comprising nearly half of all time spent on smartphone apps.

Data from both sources suggests that smartphones are used more on the go than are the larger-form tablets, although it’s important to remember that smartphone use is also above-average in the evening hours, suggesting that much of the time spent with smartphones occurs in the home. Indeed, a study released in October by AOL and BBDO found that 68% of consumer mobile phone use occurs in the home. Nevertheless, the differences in usage for smartphones and tablets means that advertisers should consider day-parting in mobile campaigns to reach the different form factors based on time of day.

About The Data: MobileSTAT (Simple Targeting & Audience Trends) is a monthly analysis of targeting and audience trends in mobile advertising through Jumptap’s network of over 30 billion impressions, 107 million U.S. users and 30,000 apps and websites.

Flurry data is from September 2012 Flurry Analytics, and from more than 6 billion application sessions across approximately 500 million smart devices, and a panel of 30 million+ consumers who have opted-in to share demographic data.